Chapter Thirty-Nine
The drive north took an eternity. Angela squirmed.
Her ribs and stomach ached. She winced. Sawyer would change his position, dangerously close to hovering.
She’d pull back, not needing anyone to see their personal business.
Then the cycle would repeat itself, except in reverse.
She’d move toward him, and he’d press away like she had the plague.
But that was far from her most pressing thought. Mylene Hathaway had her full attention. Why did she want to talk to Angela? How did she even know that Angela was nearby?
Roman exited the interstate. Anxiety and anticipation were a heart-rattling combination.
Her hands shook in her lap. Angela wished her untrained status wasn’t so apparent when surrounded by bombproof mountains of men.
Then again, why did she care? She’d probably never see Cash and Roman again, and Sawyer had already seen her vulnerabilities.
Once again, her mind was back on Sawyer.
Roman made a few quick turns and then pulled the SUV toward a standard-looking office park surrounded by a very non-standard high metal fence topped with razor wire. The vehicle stopped at a security checkpoint.
“This looks very official,” she said under her breath.
Roman rolled down his window and stated who they were. A man with a working dog circled the car. Another man with a mirror on a telescoped poll inspected the vehicle’s undercarriage.
After the group had passed the mirror-and-dog inspection, the barriers in front of them lowered. Roman rolled over what she assumed were security spikes ensuring traffic moved only in one direction.
“Is this some kind of black-ops site?” she asked.
Roman nodded. “Something like that.”
They parked in a space near the front of a building. Angela’s nerves rocketed from her fingers to her toes.
Roman opened her car door, and Angela winced as she crawled out. “Do you think she’s in there?” she asked.
“Yup. I do,” Roman said.
They met Sawyer and Cash on the sidewalk.
Cash led the way. Roman took the rear. Sawyer placed himself on the side of the street.
They surrounded her like a security detail, not trusting their high-security surroundings.
She couldn’t imagine how someone who wanted her dead might penetrate the complex.
Then again, she couldn’t have imagined most of what had transpired recently.
“You doing okay, Ange?” Sawyer asked.
“Nervous.” She ached to reach for Sawyer’s hand. Professionalism kept her in check. Their lives would return to normal eventually. There was no need to bring her private life into the workplace. Somewhere in this building was a woman who Angela needed to see, who she wanted to save.
Could she still do that? Nothing had gone according to plan. Certainly, Angela hadn’t imagined Mylene would be looking for her also.
They entered through heavily guarded double doors. The Titan men relinquished their weapons. They walked toward metal detectors while their belongings crept slowly down a conveyor belt and were viewed under an X-ray.
“Guess you guys aren’t messing around,” she said to the man who nodded for her to proceed.
Not messing around meant he didn’t break his scowl even when escorting their group down a long hall that dead-ended with a single elevator. Their guard swiped a badge and stared into a retina scanner, and the elevator’s large doors opened to reveal a compartment like an oversized freight cart.
The guard swiped his badge and scanned his eyes again before selecting their floor. The door shut slowly as though they were too heavy to move fast. Then down everyone went, past the first two underground levels, until they opened on the floor labeled Sub-Level C.
Armed security greeted them. None of the men with Angela balked at their high-caliber-rifle-bearing counterparts who led the way.
After a journey down a long hallway illuminated by fluorescent lights, the party was deposited in a small room that looked like a television police drama’s take on an interrogation room. The metal table was bolted onto the cement floor, and the air smelled like despair.
An armed man gestured to the chair. “Ma’am.”
Angela took a seat. No one else did. The metal chairs were as uncomfortable as they looked.
Cash and Roman posted behind her. Sawyer stood across from her, his back to a painted cinderblock wall.
“This is cozy,” she said.
Sawyer’s lips curved.
The door swung open, and Special Agent John Patterson joined them. “Angela, it’s great to see you again.”
She didn’t fake the same enthusiasm, but she kept her interaction with him professional. They shook hands, and then he introduced himself to Titan’s men. Titan remained where they were as John joined her at the table. His chair scraped on the floor as he made himself as comfortable as possible.
“I’m sorry about our conversation in Abu Dhabi,” he said.
She glanced over John’s shoulder. Sawyer’s face was unreadable. “I guess you had a job to do,” she said.
“Not all my jobs are fun and games all the time.” John frowned contritely. “But I am sorry. I know I didn’t put you in a great position.”
She didn’t want to rehash their meeting. “Do you really work on Pham? Or just my mother’s projects?”
“All Pham, all the time.”
“Except when dealing with me,” she pointed out.
He took a pen from the interior pocket of his suit jacket. “You are intrinsically connected to Pham.”
Angela wished that weren’t true.
“This is what we know.” John click-clicked his pen. “Mylene Hathaway called your mother’s office and demanded to speak with you. She called from an easily traceable phone number and hadn’t done anything to hide her tracks.”
“She wanted me to come to her?”
John shook his head. “Given her mental clarity, I don’t think that was at the forefront of her mind.”
“What is?”
A hint of frustration on John’s face was quickly hidden behind a controlled, closed-lipped expression. “I haven’t had much time with her. She will only speak to us after speaking to you.”
“Does she have a lawyer?”
John’s gaze shifted around the room before he crossed his arms. “She hasn’t been arrested. This isn’t a law enforcement facility.”
What type was it? Military? DNI? CIA? NSA? Mylene was here as a terrorist. They—whoever ran this facility—weren’t interested in the murder of her husband and sister. They wanted intelligence. “All right. She wants to talk to me about Pham.”
“As she indicated on the phone call to the Senator’s office.” John nodded. “She doesn’t want you to testify.”
Angela recalled the recording of the phone call. The chaotic voice had mentioned testifying against Pham, but the caller hadn’t made much sense.
“We have Mylene in a nearby room. She’s secured at a table. She cannot get up or move around. You’re safe. She’s not a threat.”
Angela hadn’t considered that Mylene would want to hurt her. “Will you be in there?”
“I will escort you in, but I don’t plan to stay.”
“You’ll be watching from another room?” she asked.
Again, he clicked his pen. “Yes. There will be two armed men immediately outside the door. There will be two men posted behind her.”
“I don’t think she wants to hurt me. She might not want me to testify, but I don’t think she’ll physically try to stop me.”
“Maybe not. But that’s protocol.”
“Protocol for a woman who was kept hostage by a terrorist?”
“Are you referring to yourself or Mylene Hathaway? Because we don’t understand her role yet.”
Angela hated John Patterson. “She’s a victim.”
“She’s a woman who wants leniency for Pham, a terrorist.”
“I know who Pham is,” she snapped.
“What you don’t seem to understand is that Mylene has been intimately involved in a foreign-based misinformation campaign,” John replied equally coolly.
“Not to mention, she’s part of his network, which understands that if you’re eliminated, you won’t be able to testify—and the case against him crumbles. ”
“That’s bullshit. There’s plenty of evidence of exactly what he did to me. What he’s done to everyone.”
“You still don’t understand the threat you’re under.”
Anger flashed down her spine.
“Pham’s a billionaire with a network of killers and a legal firm of A-plus lawyers working around the clock on his defense.
To prosecutors, you’re the golden ticket.
Angela…” John drew in a deep breath and let it out.
“Simply put, the case would be easier to plead down if you were dead. So pardon me if I want you to understand why we have this woman at a black site, chained to the table.”
Angela rubbed her temples. “Can Sawyer come in with me?”
John’s eyebrows arched. “He can watch from where I am. We’ll be less than five feet away.”
“I’d rather he was in the same room.”
John looked over his shoulder and studied Sawyer’s face.
Sawyer didn’t offer the behavioral analysist anything to decipher.
John pursed his lips. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.
” He pulled his cell phone from his pocket.
“Mylene isn’t in a good headspace. Adding another person to the mix might not help with our end goal. ”
She bet their end goal wasn’t the same as hers.
John held up his phone. The screen showed a paused video of Mylene. “This is her.”
That woman was definitely the woman Angela had seen over the years, but the Mylene on the screen and the one in Angela’s past were worlds apart. This Mylene was broken. “That’s her?”
John pressed Play.
The video came to life. Mylene sat on the cement floor of a cell, moaning.
Her arms wrapped around her knees. She rocked on the floor, occasionally releasing her knees and pulling fistfuls of her tangled hair.
In a hoarse voice, she begged to go home.
She cried and cackled and curled like a baby, moaning again.
Angela tore her gaze from the screen. “And now she’s cuffed to a table?”
“Secured,” John agreed.
Her pulse quickened. “She doesn’t need to be here. She needs help.”
“Actually,” he countered, “she wants to be here. Remember? She wants to see you.”